Industry analysts have their full attention on Acumatica. Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), Ted Rohm Senior ERP Analyst, released a review of Acumatica in a special report. He touts Acumatica as an enterprise ERP solution available for mid-market businesses at an affordable price. The following is a summary of the topics covered in this report entitled:

When it comes to selecting ERP for your manufacturing firm, you face a series of decisions and need to ask a lot of questions. How should we deploy the software? Who do we want to implement the product? How much training do users need? However, two of the most important questions to ask are as follows:

People often compare ERP implementations to heart surgeries—if the doctor was to complete a surgery while the patient was awake and at work. When you move to upgrade your ERP, you are letting a partner see the intimate details of your business, make a necessary change and get up and running. The change can vastly improve your business, but it’s important to know that no matter how beneficial, there is always some risk involved—so it pays to choose wisely.

Decision makers at manufacturing firms have to process a lot of data and turn it into usable information. Whether you are trying to understand the health of your business, looking to make an investment in the future, or need to understand what products are selling and what your most profitable items are, understanding having the right data at your fingertips is critical to succeed.

Your manufacturing firm needs real-time visibility into sales, order management, inventory, purchasing, production and services—and accounting information. For many firms, the cloud has become synonymous with the innovation, speed of business, and visibility that you need, delivering anytime, anywhere access, automation, and intelligence at an affordable price.

Today’s manufacturing landscape is more challenging than ever. From the push to globalize to the talent shortage, it’s becoming harder and harder for mid-sized manufacturers to keep up. From the Industrial Internet of Things to the move by many manufacturers to sell direct using ecommerce to robotics, exciting new technologies are changing the way manufacturers work.

What is the factory of the future? When I think about the future for manufacturing companies I envision the basics and at a minimum, workers having mobile access to their work orders, instructions, and their time sheets. Ultimately having immediate access to quality tests and results, and deprecating inventory from the work order would be ideal. Integration to suppliers and distributors through EDI with a robust ERP with strong inventory forecasting or master planning module would be key. The next steps would be building a service department focused on the repair and maintenance, and preventative or predictive maintenance of the products produced. Adding a set of technology tools such as remote monitoring through Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI to next to existing ERP would be ideal.

Most, if not all, organizations have machinery or equipment that requires regular maintenance. In addition to timely preventative maintenance, repairs and even complete overhauls are sometimes necessary so an asset can produce its’ expected return on investment. An organization can have a tremendous investment in its’ machinery and equipment as well as be dependent on their being available and working at optimal performance. Managing this well is imperative to the success of an organization.

Dynamics 365 Enterprise is now even a better value for businesses with the recent new feature release, Custom Fields. This feature allows any user with security to add custom fields to form windows. I am amazed daily by the depth of Dynamics 365 Enterprise and the constant flow of new features in an already feature rich environment. Now with this latest feature there is very little this solution can not do. In fact we had an all day presentation recently and the prospect had spent the previous day on a SAP demonstration. We got immediate feedback that Dynamics 365 Enterprise was easier to navigate and more user friendly than SAP. Not only was the prospect impressed, but the consulting firm they hired to help them evaluate ERP solutions agreed. The consultant also stated that they were very impressed by the deep functionality of Dynamics 365 Enterprise.

Do your engineers find themselves so busy with projects coupled with doing BOM clerical work that your company needs to outsource engineering services? If your manufacturing business is in constant BOM version hell, then join us for CADLink webinar, showing a seamless integration of CAD with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Invest an hour to get information on CADLink that integrates CAD with ERP. This solution typically has a 6 month ROI as product design accelerates by around 25% because of the automation of BoMs from engineering to manufacturing to operations or ERP.